Phone-Off: Asus Zenfone 3 Max 5.5 vs Oppo F1s

It’s the battle between Asus and Oppo in the mid-range category, both are capable of being your next smartphone. At about 2000 pesos apart, which do you think is the best buy for you?

Design

Starting with design, Zenfone 3 Max 5.5 body is made of metal backing with plastic caps on the top and the bottom portion that rounds at the corners to meet the 2.5D curved gorilla glass 4. The fingerprint sensor is located at the back along with the flushed rear camera. The power button and volume rocker can be found on the right side while the hybrid dual nano-SIM tray is on the opposite end. Up top sits the 3.5mm headphone jack and at the bottom is the microUSB port along with mono speaker grille. Its chin houses the non-backlit capacitive navigation keys.

The F1s is also made of metal with plastic for the top and bottom caps to make way for signal reception. The 3.55mm headphone jack and micro-USB port will be located at the bottom along with the dual speaker grilles. On the right side is the power button with the hybrid dual sim tray above it, and the volume rocker is situated on the left side. The chin houses the home button that doubles as a fingerprint scanner accompanied by two backlit navigation keys. Gorilla Glass 4 will be its choice of protection too.

Both devices provide good grip in the hands with a smooth touch on the metal finish. Overall, the F1s just provides a sleeker design compared to the slightly bulkier Zenfone 3 Max 5.5.

F1s wins this one by a small margin.

Display

One of the biggest differences that can be seen on the spec sheet is the display. Both screens measure at 5.5-inches but the F1s comes with HD or 720p resolution at 267ppi compared to 1080p or Full HD found on the Zenfone 3 Max at 401ppi. No doubt that the Max presents crisper details with natural colors while the F1s is brighter with saturated colors that lean to a cooler tone.

The Zenfone 3 Max 5.5, wins this one.

Camera

Outdoor shots favored the Zenfone 3 Max 5.5 as colors appear to be lively compared to the paler version of the F1s. However, taking a picture of close objects will provide you a crisper image on the F1s. The same story can be said with indoor shots complimenting the Zenfone 3 max.

Low-light scenarios though favors the F1s in capturing details but with pale colors compared to Zenfone 3 max’s vivid but underexposed photo. Flash will aid the former with a smooth texture and bright image while the latter with better sharpness.

Taking selfies though is a game changer for F1s as it produced sharp image with good color reproduction but overexposes bright areas compared to the dull version of Zenfone Max 3 5.5

Both can record up to 1080p @ 30 fps with the F1s having smoother video processing while the Zenfone 3 Max 5.5 with colorful and detailed video quality.,

F1s handled the selfies better but loses the point and shoot game with the Zenfone 3 Max 5.5. We will let you decide on this one so we are giving it a tie.

Performance

F1s is backed up by a MediaTek MT6750 octa-core CPU clocked at 1.5GHz while the Zenfone 3 max 5.5 is using a Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 octa-core CPU clocked at 1.4ghz. Both devices are paired with 3GB RAM. Antutu benchmark was close by a 3k point margin.

Navigating both devices were smooth with very minimal lags but loading an application proves to be faster for the F1s thanks to its Color OS 3.0(based on Android 5.0) that comes with less bloatware compared to the skin heavy Zen-UI(based on Android 6.0). However, playing the most graphic intensive games like Nova 3 belongs to the Zenfone 3 max 5.5 achieving smoother frame rates.

Zenfone 3 max, wins this one

Battery

Zenfone 3 Max 5.5 main highlight is the 4100mah battery pack with support for reverse charging while the F1s is coming in with a 3000mah battery.

Charging the Zenfone 3 max 5.5 took 2hours and 50 mins from zero to a 100 percent while F1s took 2hours 20mins. Endurance test though was a bit of a disappointment for Zenfone 3 max 5.5 with 28 hours of standby time and 4 hours screen on time compared to the 31.3hours of standby time and 4.5hours screen on time of the F1s. We’ve reached out to Asus and said this will be fixed in the next software update.

Audio

Standard mono speakers are found on both devices which produced the same quality and intensity that lacks bass.

We are giving it a tie.

Pricing and verdict

In that span of time, the Asus was able to close the gap with a lower price tag. F1s is a perfect buy for someone who wants to take their selfies to another level but Asus Zenfone 3 max 5.5 is just hard to ignore that excels in many aspects of a smartphone.

What do you think of this comparison? Let us know at the comments section below.

Hi! I'm Jade, an Electronics and Communications Engineer and tech enthusiast. I am the editor-in-chief here at ManilaShaker and on our YouTube channel. If you have questions, suggestions or anything we could talk about you can find me Instagram and Twitter @jadejardinico.

M.K. Shiro

Was this review done with the Zen3 Max 5.5 on the latest firmware? There has been 3 (iirc) updates with camera improvements on the Zen3 Max 5.5. And I can confirm that the battery life is very good with the latest firmware. I always average with around 10 hrs of screen time on wifi, aroun 8 hours on data.

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